I would say that a beginner who is using tonguing to articulate everything, rather than the fingers (cuts, pats, and rolls), is not getting off on the right foot. My point is that finger articulation is integral to the style, and should be learned from the very start, not viewed as “ornamental” and something to be thrown in later in order to sound fancier.
I believe that you are all the right. When started I used tonguin generally to play some song, now I do not imagine to touch something without applying rolls, cut, taps, etc. Is thing of time and custom.
Playing the basic melody and incorporating ornaments are important, but do not complete the entire picture. For the music to truly sound “right” we should also discuss accenting and rhythm, phrasing and breathing, variations, which tunes to string together or key changes, tempo, smearing, etc.
Avoiding the ornamentation at the outset reduces some of the learning curve’s steepness, which may be necessary for some learners to move forward. Baby steps or quantum leaps, take your pick. A good teacher and/or an honest self assessment of aptitude, coupled with some trial and error will help determine a course of action.
I have always been told that Guiness is pretty good. Post above proves it.
As per Guinness’ post, the articulation (done with the fingers) is an integral part of reel and jig playing, and getting the rythm and phrasing to sound “traditional” does not happen without it. (Yes I know Micho Russell invented his own style of rolling, and there was/is a “fife style” of flute playing etc etc but I’m talking about the mainstream way of playing jigs and reels on the whistle over the last few decades).
Once again this articulation, done with the fingers, is not “ornamentation” and is not superfluous to the melody nor is it decorative in intent.
Yes I agree that beginners should “avoid ornamentation”, but seperating notes with cuts and pats is not ornamentation, it’s part of the very fabric of producing melodies on the instrument. If you want to tongue everything, play the recorder or Boehm flute.
I can’t see where Guiness said that. So who are you agreeing with?
More accurately, if you want to tongue everything, play classical music. You can articulate with cuts, taps and rolls on a recorder or a boehm flute. It’s not about the instrument.
The music commonly associated with those instruments is…
Yes, exactly. One can play a lot of classical music on the Irish flute which is a flute modelled on pre Boehm European classical wooden flutes. And then there are some who play Boehm Irish very well like Sarah Allen of Flook.
As to the question of what is “commonly associated” with recorder and flute, does anyone who knows anything about classical western music really think its vast gamut can be subject to simple charaterisations?
Just a question.
No. But it sure does fall into those categories, vast as they may be, more often than in the category of Irish traditional folk music.
Tonguing every note in classical music is atypical. One does not define the other. Tonguing every note on a whistle does have a staccato effect, not unlike single note bowing on a fiddle (Donegal style?) or some styles of button accordion playing. Are these folks classical wannabees?
I am really liking this Guinness today.
Seeing as I am teetotaller can I go to a pub
and ask for another post of Guinness instead of a pint?
Guinness states that tonguing everything in “classical” music is atypical, but when I’ve taught Irish flute or Irish whistle workshops I always get people new to Irish music with a “classical” background, coming from Boehm flute or recorder, who have the greatest difficulty playing without tonguing every note. Some of these people simply cannot play without tonguing, and I’ve had to resort to having them hold their tongues against the roofs of their mouths so that they can experience what it’s like to play fully legato. Much of the problem may lie in the way Irish music is notated: when “classcial” musicians see those notes which are not tied/slurred together they automatically seperate them with tonguing. Then there’s the other extreme: I was at a Baroque flute workshop and an eminent expert on Baroque music told us that on the Baroque flute you tongue everything, even when notes are slurred together. True legato, he taught, is never done.
Likewise these “classical” people sitting in Irish flute or whistle workshops often play a constant vibrato on every note and sometimes it is simply impossible in a one-hour workshop to get them to stop doing it.
Coincidentally, this other topic has come up about now and some members are advising a newbie to tongue his Irish whistling a bit more
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=52698 for to improve his playing. They are giving other good advice also, of course.
Yes, that may very well be. But just how advanced were these classical folks? Tonguing is almost the first thing that’s taught on every wind instrument. Could they like play this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ZSSkMzS5E
Sheet music here (for clarinet):
http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=2288
Or here (for flute):
http://notes.tarakanov.net/flauto/syrinx.zip
(Did you hear or read lots of tonguing?)
I think much of this difficulty with “classically” trained musicians is not justified.
from what I understand, a fomally trained musician would have no difficulty with the legato/stacato style of whistle playing if it was present in the notation - the formal approach has a certain respect for the composer/arranger who they assume has made the effort to include all the important nuances within the notation. Such nuances are largely absent in the notation we use in ITM - here we assume that the player posesses enough knowledge of the style to be able to faithfully apply it.
In all that there is still the danger that one may become no more than a human-jukebox no matter which approach you took.
a matchless post by mitch …
Building on what Mitch said, I wonder if we sometimes confuse the beginners at classical music with classical music as a whole. I would define a professional in any field as one who, first and foremost, has complete command of the tools of his trade. The professional musicians I have known (whether they got paid to play or not) had complete command of their instrument and could play it in any fashion required by the music and the setting.
I can imagine a classical clarinet forum where one of the old heads describes a newbie whistler coming to the clarinet and slurring all the notes with no articulation and making the whole thing sound run-together and muddy (a pretty fair description of my early attempts at legato). This imaginary clarinet teacher then wonders why the whistlers just don’t tongue some notes and clean the whole thing up. We whistlers would all note that the clarinet teacher is confusing a beginning whistler with whistling in general and would point out that good whistlers DO tongue notes and, in fact, are quite good at it, they just don’t use it very much. We may sometimes be taking the same approach to critiqueing “classical” music.
“If you want to tongue everything, play the recorder or Boehm flute.”
“…if you want to tongue everything, play classical music.”
If you can`t tongue the notes, then play a toy like the whistle!
No, the real issue is RESPECT.
I have, in my particular tangential way, somewhat disagreed with pacelticpiper’s comments here. I hope that my disagreement was not marked by disrespect.
We do need to respect the freedom to say things and to say things incompletely sometimes at the risk of being misunderstood.
I mean, who would want to fit a thesis in every post. ?